


Never Doubt

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Series: wrist, ankle, eye, heart [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 09:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20061460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: The name on his wrist readsTony Stark, which isn’t possible becauseTony Starkis an awful person. Steve walks away and doesn’t look back.He swears he doesn't.





	Never Doubt

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably make more sense if you read part four of this series, _Next to Nothing_. Just fyi.

They say soulmates are like in Plato’s Symposium: your other half. Steve knows because he read it, when they benched him on the soccer team for spending half the game coughing. 

His mom and dad were soulmates, but Steve had never heard either of them say a word about it. He’d only found out on his mother’s deathbed, and he was near certain she’d lost most of her good sense by then, so. Maybe it wasn’t true. If it was so important, surely she would have mentioned it some time beforehand? 

But maybe she wouldn’t have, because they never talked about what to do if the conditions were unideal. If you never found your soulmate, if your soulmate was already married, if your soulmate was dead, if you couldn’t read the name on your wrist (Steve’s grandad had had that problem: he’d spent his whole life married to Steve’s grandma thinking that she was his soulmate, and only found out when she died that she wasn’t). Or if you were a guy and your soulmate wasn’t, well, a gal. There’d been some studies proclaiming it all false. Steve had tried to read those, too, but had stopped midway through. It was all cynicism, pointless in the true love that soulmates were supposed to be about. Didn’t matter if it was friendship or romance: it was  _ love.  _

Steve had always hoped he’d find his soulmate. Back when he’d been stuck at home in bed, reading comics or books while coughing himself raw, it had struck as something… nice. That there was someone out there, someone with a kind smile and a good heart, someone who would love him, skinny shy eyed Steve Rogers, without a second doubt. 

He stole one of his mother’s most worn books on the subject once. He hated that he had to put it back before she would notice. It was a story: a prince got lost in a foreign kingdom in search of gold: instead he found a peasant girl whom he loved so much they ran away, their names forever twined together on the kingdom’s old murals, mirrors to their names on each other’s wrist. 

He wrote out his favourite quote from the book, and kept it in his pocket from then on, no matter what. 

_ “Every metaphor for my love had been stolen, all my words; so here, I leave you with actions.”  _

He had planned to give it to Peggy at their dance. It stays in his pocket the whole seventy years. 

.

They’ve been telling him about Tony Stark. 

Tony Stark: billionaire, genius, inventor, disrespectful, promiscuous, wildcard. Cannot be controlled. Never does what’s right. Took up superheroing to please some sort of sick desire to have the world worship him instead of rightfully detest him. They show him plenty of videos- frankly more than he’d ever have liked to see. 

So when Steve shakes Stark’s hand and a burning pain goes up his wrist, his first thought is  _ no.  _ Clear and burning like the pain in his wrist, enough to make him want to double over. It’s like getting  _ shot,  _ before he took the serum. He stays standing as Fury rushes through his story, tells nothing but the barest bones. He thinks, suddenly, that maybe that’s what they’ve been telling him about Stark: the skeletal wires of his story. This man-  _ man-  _ is his soulmate. Maybe he’s not all that awful. 

Then Stark opens his mouth. 

Later, Steve will look down over Tony’s corpse and  _ weep,  _ and think this was the precise moment where he had ruined it all. But in this moment, all he can feel is contempt. For the man standing across from him, for himself, because if his other half is so terrible, then there must be something rotten in him. 

The conversation ends with a whimper. Tony looks him in the eye, once, and gives him a smile Steve’s seen on screen before: lips curled up coyly, eyes glittering with mirth. Here, though, there’s menace. Tony must return Steve’s sentiment.

Steve thinks:  _ actions, not words.  _ Looks his supposed soulmate in the eyes, and apologizes to the boy who sat in the bleachers reading about people who were forever meant for each other. 

And he walks away. 

He swears he doesn't look back. 

He swears it. 

(He leaves the quote on Tony's grave, instead of flowers. He doesn't deserve it, not anymore.)


End file.
